A list of potential Category Entry Points is easy to put together. The choice of which ones you claim determines what they deliver for your brand. Therefore, assess your CEPs across three dimensions: how often the moment occurs, how many people recognise it, and how well you, as a brand, claim it compared to the competition. A moment like ‘It’s almost the weekend’ applies to everyone. ‘My children have sport tonight’ excludes a large part of your market. Read on to find out how to use these three dimensions to select the CEPs that most increase your mental availability.
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As a brand, you want as many consumers as possible to think of your brand. You want to be top of mind. The more memory structures you activate in people’s daily lives and manage to link your brand to them, the more often consumers think of you, and the more revenue you ultimately generate as a brand.
One way to boost your mental availability is by utilising Category Entry Points. And once you have gathered a list of potential CEPs within your category, you need to select the most impactful ones.
Category Entry Points represent moments and situations when people first think of the category. When you make your bed in the morning, you might think of mattresses, or even a specific brand. If your brand sells beds, you can capitalise on this and claim the morning. The reverse is also possible: claiming moments where the category or your brand is not necessarily thought of, such as Coca-Cola claiming Christmas with its with its Father Christmas campaigns.
Assess your potential Category Entry Points across these three dimensions
From our countless studies, we can confidently state that three dimensions have proven effective for assessment:
1. Assess your CEPs for relevance
Consider how frequently a CEP, a specific moment, occurs in consumers’ daily lives. The more often such a situation arises in a day, the more often the consumer is triggered. And if you claim that specific moment as a CEP, your brand will come to mind more often than it would with a moment that occurs less frequently. If you choose the most common CEP, you will boost your mental availability.
2. Go for CEPs that appeal to the masses
Which CEPs will be most recognisable to the entire Dutch (or international) population? By claiming such Category Entry Points, you want as many people as possible to think of your brand, so that you fill the top of your marketing funnel. To do this, you need to appeal to the largest possible target group with those moments.Take ‘My children have sport tonight’: you have already lost half of the Dutch population because they don’t have children. But if you talk about ‘It’s almost the weekend’, this moment applies to everyone.
3. Select the CEPs that set you apart from your competitors
As a brand, you will always encounter other brands within your category: your competitors. Ideally, you want memory structures to be activated immediately when consumers experience your claimed CEPs in daily life. But this only happens if your CEPs stand out within the category. So, when selecting, ask yourself which CEPs are worth claiming for your brand. And how easily they can be linked to YOUR brand, without consumers thinking of another brand.
These three dimensions can help you select the most impactful CEPs. However, when considering these dimensions, always keep in mind the direction you want to take as a brand. Discover what Category Entry Points can mean for your brand
Curious how to use your selected CEPs strategically? Or do you want to discover what Category Entry Points can do for your brand? Get in touch.
